Seeking a comeback
Perhaps Salma Hayek has already done a comeback. This fall, the actress took the stage at the world premiere of Gucci’s new home in Milan, a blisteringly intelligent, era-defining space dripping with culture, art and culture. Hayek sat on the front row at the event, one of many nights since she hosted screenings of various Gucci fall couture creations, for which she was an ambassador. At the opening of the art exhibition in October, she rode the black Mercedes along with model and Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele, her husband François-Henri Pinault and the new museum’s trustees and friends, who organized the exhibition in partnership with the Venice Biennale. Just last week, she appeared at WWD’s Women in Motion event for Women Who Run With the Wolves, a gender-equal story about a Mexican artist and a teenage girl who battle for inclusion in Mexico’s elite art scene. She played the part of Trudi, an artist who travels to Los Angeles to explore fame and offers the woman who gives her a job at Art & Artist an alternative path to success.
Whatever comeback she has, it has given Hayek one of the most impressive resumes for a 41-year-old film star in Hollywood. Her next film, the Al Pacino and Alec Baldwin-starring comedy Why Him?, about a struggling actress and a venture capitalist husband who play lovable fools, opens Dec. 14. She’s also playing Nancy Reagan in a film based on Life With Ronald Reagan.
The duality of Salma Hayek is part of what has made her a leading lady.
Her career stretches from her work with the Frida Kahlo Yarn Spinners Project and the Sierra Leone Initiative for Paraplegic Unexplained Illness (SUWAI) in 1999 to producing her own line of lingerie for Gucci. She wrote The Prophet, which became a bestselling book that was turned into a multi- Emmy-winning TV series. She has helmed several projects, including a series for TNT, Satisfaction and the popular web series Dear Salma. Her company Elefante Blanco has created content and production houses including Ensemble and Limitless. So they did.
She has also grown into a leading household name and has been walking the red carpet around the world with John Mayer. A tireless advocate for equal rights, she has gone on hunger strikes, including one for the cause of La Leche League for the Palestinian Codeine Cookery Card.
If you need a reminder of her success, just look at the fashion statement she wore to support the women of Gucci when they officially unveiled their brand on stage. It can be traced back to a catwalk that Hayek walked in Paris more than 20 years ago.
A perennial film buff, she thought it was only right that the Gucci logo incorporated the name of the film, so she wrote an elegant script to express herself and wore it across her silk cocktail dress. It reminded her of the day she last saw the Marrakech International Film Festival and the dream that lingerie had grown up.